TOKYO: Approval ratings for Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba have fallen ahead of an October 27 general election, one weekend poll showed, with another survey suggesting the ruling coalition could struggle to secure a majority.
Former defense minister Ishiba took office this month after being voted leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power for most of Japan’s post-war history.
Scandals over funding and LDP lawmakers’ ties to the Unification Church, compounded by voter discontent over rising prices, caused the party’s ratings to plummet during the tenure of Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida.
A Kyodo News survey on Saturday and Sunday put the current approval rating for Ishiba’s cabinet at 41.4 percent, down from 42.0 percent a week earlier.
The disapproval rating was 40.4 percent in the most recent survey of some 1,260 voters, Kyodo said Sunday. Disapproval in the October 12-13 poll was 36.7 percent.
A separate weekend survey by the liberal-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper found public support for Ishiba’s cabinet at 33 percent, below 39 percent who disapproved.
Those results are worse than Kishida faced in 2021 ahead of his first general election as premier: 42 percent approval against 31 percent disapproval, the Asahi said.
The daily said its polls indicated that the LDP and its junior coalition partner Komeito ran the risk of losing a majority in the upcoming vote.
Jiji Press said its polls and reporting showed the coalition was likely to retain its majority, although the LDP may not pass the threshold on its own — a possibility reflected in several previous polls by other outlets.
The conservative LDP and Komeito, a moderate party backed by a Buddhist-linked group, have been in power since 2012 when late former premier Shinzo Abe won a landslide victory.
“Regardless of whether or not we lose our majority, we should hold positive talks with parties that are trying to develop the country with the same policies,” the LDP’s secretary general Hiroshi Moriyama said in a political debate program aired by public broadcaster NHK on Sunday.
Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election
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Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election
- Former defense minister Ishiba took office this month after being voted leader of the Liberal Democratic Party
Polio is rising in Pakistan ahead of a new vaccination campaign
- Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, despite conducting multiple campaigns
- Pakistan regularly launches polio campaigns despite attacks on workers and police assigned to inoculation drives
Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, said Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication.
The new nationwide drive starts Oct. 28 with the aim to vaccinate at least 32 million children. “The whole purpose of these campaigns is to achieve the target of making Pakistan a polio-free state,” he said.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Most of the new polio cases were reported in the southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and eastern Punjab province.
The locations are worrying authorities since previous cases were from the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban government in September suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. Authorities in Pakistan have said that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions beyond the Afghan border, as people from both sides frequently travel to each other’s country.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023. Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy this June for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, according to WHO.
Health officials in Pakistan say they want the both sides to conduct anti-polio drives simultaneously.
As US election looms, Pentagon chief visits Ukraine in show of support
KYIV: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Ukraine on Monday, in a show of US support for Kyiv just two weeks ahead of a US presidential election that is casting uncertainty over the future of Western support.
Austin’s trip, his fourth and likely final visit as President Joe Biden’s Pentagon chief, will include in-depth discussions about US efforts to help Kyiv shore up its defenses as Moscow’s forces advance in the east.
In a first, France welcomes Russian army deserters
- One deserter said he wanted Russian soldiers to know there was “always” a choice
Caen: Six Russian soldiers who fled the fighting in Ukraine have found refuge in France and hope to receive asylum, in a landmark case of Russian deserters being welcomed in an EU country as a group.
The deserters, all of whom had reached France via Kazakhstan, told AFP in a series of interviews they hoped their actions would encourage other Russian men to defy Moscow authorities and flee the war, now in its third year.
“Maybe, thanks to my example, someone will be inspired and want to quit the army,” said Alexander, who unwittingly took part in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The weaker the army at the front is, the fewer people there are, the quicker the war will end and Ukraine will win,” said the 26-year-old.
Among those who have arrived in France over the past few months are mostly those who managed to desert before being sent to the front. Alexander, however, was dispatched to Ukraine but eventually managed to flee.
The six Russian deserters arrived in France thanks to support from rights groups including Russie-Libertes, a Paris-based association. Some arrived with their partners so in total 10 people received permission to enter the country.
Speaking to AFP in the northwestern French city of Caen, Alexander said he was in shock when Russia’s invasion began in February, 2022.
Having left with his unit for “military exercises” in the peninsula of Crimea annexed by Russia in 2014, he recounted crossing the Ukrainian border in a convoy and suddenly finding himself “in another country.”
“Our commanders told us it would be over in ten days,” he said.
He said he did not engage in combat and dealt largely with communications.
Another deserter said he wanted Russian soldiers to know there was “always” a choice.
“There is always a possibility to lay down your arms, not to kill other people and to end your participation in this war,” 27-year-old Sergei (not his real name) said in Paris.
Since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Western countries including France have welcomed thousands of anti-Kremlin Russians.
However, activists say European governments have been wary of welcoming Russian soldiers because they are viewed as a security risk and might have committed war crimes.
Olga Prokopieva, head of Russie Libertes, hailed France’s “unprecedented” move and urged other European countries to follow suit.
“It has taken us a year of talks,” she said. “We have tried so many things.”
All the men had been vetted by the activists, Prokopieva said, adding her organization was in touch with more deserters now living in Kazakhstan.
Faced with a choice between taking part in a war of aggression or going to prison for refusing to fight in Ukraine, hundreds of deserters and draft dodgers have over the past two years fled to neighboring ex-Soviet countries.
But they do not feel safe in countries like Kazakhstan and Armenia, which have close ties to Moscow, and risk being deported back to Russia to face prosecution.
Apart from being viewed with suspicion in the West, it is also hard for Russian servicemen to seek refuge in Europe for logistical reasons.
Many have documents that only permit them to reach ex-Soviet countries such as Kazakhstan or Armenia, and not the type of Russian passport valid for visas and travel to Europe.
Andrei Amonov was stranded in Kazakhstan for two years before arriving in France.
“I lived in fear for two years,” he said.
The 32-year-old road worker from the city of Mirny deep in northeastern Siberia was one day told by his boss he was “fired” and had to go to the front or face prosecution.
Along with other men, Amonov was put on a plane and flown to the city of Ulan-Ude to undergo training. He managed to escape and flew to Kazakhstan.
He was briefly detained on May 12, his birthday, when Kazakh police came to his apartment, handcuffed him and took him to the police station. He was later released.
He was lonely, could not find a permanent job, and suffered from depression and panic attacks.
Sergei, a professional soldier, also said he was afraid of being arrested and deported.
On top of being a deserter, Sergei is gay and lived in the conservative Central Asian country with his partner. “Things were a bit scary in Kazakhstan.”
Another deserter, Mikhail (not his real name) said the day the war broke out changed everything. “I realized that from now on I won’t move a finger to support this,” he said.
A former career officer who now wears his hair long, he recounted in great detail how for months he resisted orders to go to the front and dragged out the legal proceedings authorities launched against him.
He finally fled in May 2023, just days before his trial.
“The day I arrived in Astana was the best day of my life,” he said, referring to the capital of Kazakhstan.
In Kazakhstan the deserters met through local rights activists and recorded videos to encourage others to flee the battlefield as part of an initiative dubbed “Farewell to arms.”
In France, the men finally feel safe.
Sergei can hold hands with his partner in public. “It is a very nice feeling,” he said.
Amonov, who had never before traveled to Europe, is preparing to start a new life in Bordeaux and is learning French and English.
“Freedom, finally! And safety,” he said. “At last I am feeling better.”
IMF, World Bank meetings clouded by wars, slow economic growth, US election
- US election could reshape trade, climate policies
- Anti-China trade sentiment is key topic at meetings
WASHINGTON: Global finance chiefs will gather in Washington this week amid intense uncertainty over wars in the Middle East and Europe, a flagging Chinese economy and worries that a coin-toss US presidential election could ignite new trade battles and erode multilateral cooperation.
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings are scheduled to draw more than 10,000 people from finance ministries, central banks and civil society groups to discuss efforts to boost patchy global growth, deal with debt distress and finance the green energy transition.
But the elephant in the meeting rooms will be the potential for a Nov. 5 election victory by US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to upend the international economic system with massive new US tariffs and borrowing and a shift away from climate cooperation.
“Arguably the most important issue for the global economy — the outcome of the US election — is not on the official agenda this week, but it’s on everyone’s mind,” said Josh Lipsky, a former IMF official who now heads the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.
The election “has huge implications on trade policy, on the future of the dollar, on who the next Federal Reserve chair is going to be, and all of those impact every country in the world,” he added.
US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, is largely expected to continue the Biden administration’s resumption of multilateral cooperation on climate, tax and debt relief issues if she wins next month’s vote.
The meetings, which start on Monday and get into full swing later in the week, will likely be the last for US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who spearheaded much of the Biden administration’s multilateral economic and climate efforts. Yellen has said she is “probably done” with public service at the end of President Joe Biden’s term in office in January.
But growing anti-China trade sentiment and industrial policy plans from wealthy countries, punctuated by the Biden administration’s steep tariff increases on Chinese electric vehicles, semiconductors and solar products, is expected to be a key discussion topic at the meetings.
Lackluster growth
The IMF will update its global growth forecasts on Tuesday. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva last week flagged a lackluster outlook, saying the world, saddled by high debts, was headed for slow medium-term growth, and pointing to a “difficult future.”
Still, Georgieva said she was “not super-pessimistic” about the outlook, given pockets of resilience, notably in the US and India that are offsetting continued weakness in China and Europe.
While debt defaults among poor countries may have peaked, participants at the annual meetings are expected to discuss the growing problem of scarce liquidity that is forcing some emerging markets saddled with high debt service costs to delay development investments as overseas aid shrinks.
Last year’s IMF and World Bank annual meetings got underway in Morocco as the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and unleashing conflicts with a death toll of more than 40,000 Gazans, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The economic damage has been largely limited to economies in or adjacent to the conflict: Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.
“If there was to be an escalation that puts at risk oil and gas delivery, that could have much more significant spillover for the world economy,” Georgieva told Reuters in an interview.
Support for Ukraine also will be a major topic at the meetings, as the G7 wealthy democracies aim to reach a political agreement by the end of October for a $50 billion loan for the Eastern European country backed by frozen Russian sovereign assets. The loan in part is seen as a financial bulwark against a Trump victory next month, as the former US president has threatened to “get out of Ukraine.”
Despite the wall of worry, World Bank and IMF officials intend to spend the week concentrating on the work at hand at the meetings, which coincide with the 80th anniversary of the institutions’ founding in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
For World Bank President Ajay Banga, that means finding ways to speed up the preparations of projects to use the bank’s expanded lending capacity and refining a new scorecard aimed at improving development outcomes.
“The world is the world right now. And rather than use the meetings to go over what we already seem to know — which is to admire the problem — I’d like to take the annual meetings to doing something about what we can do as institutions,” Banga told reporters last week.
King Charles says signs of climate change in Australia ‘unmistakable’
- “It’s in all our interests to be good stewards of the world,” he said in his first speech inside Australia’s parliament as head of state
CANBERRA: King Charles warned of “overwhelming” climate dangers in an address at Australia’s parliament on Monday, saying the growing ferocity of bushfires and floods were an “unmistakable sign” of a sweltering planet.
The monarch urged Australia — a longtime climate laggard with an economy geared around mining and coal — to assume the mantle of global leadership in the race to slash emissions.
“It’s in all our interests to be good stewards of the world,” he said in his first speech inside Australia’s parliament as head of state.
The 75-year-old sovereign is on a nine-day jaunt through Australia and Samoa, the first major foreign tour since his life-changing cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
His environmental advocacy — which has seen him dubbed the “climate king” — is sure to resonate in a country scarred by fires and floods.
The “magnitude and ferocity” of these natural disasters was accelerating, said Charles, who described the “roll of unprecedented events” as “an unmistakable sign of climate change.”
“This is why Australia’s international leadership on global initiatives to protect our climate and biodiversity is of such absolute and critical importance.”
Charles paid particular tribute to Indigenous “traditional owners of the lands” who had “loved and cared for this continent for 65,000 years.”
At the end of his speech, as the hearty applause receded, an Indigenous lawmaker shocked the audience with her own interjection.
“Give us our land back!” screamed independent senator Lidia Thorpe, who had earlier turned her back on the king as the crowd stood for the national anthem.
“This is not your land, you are not my king” the lawmaker added, decrying what she described as a “genocide” of Indigenous Australians by European settlers.
Charles will later visit a purpose-built lab at Australia’s public science agency, which is used to study the bushfires that routinely ravage swathes of the country.
He will then stroll through plots of native flowers at Australia’s national botanic garden, discussing how a heating planet imperils the country’s many unique species.
A lifelong greenie, Charles’ passion for conservation once saw him painted as a bit of an oddball.
He famously converted an Aston Martin DB6 to run on ethanol from leftover cheese and white wine, and once confessed that he talked to plants to help them grow.
In a brief moment of levity during an otherwise weighty address, Charles spoke fondly of his teenage experiences as a student in rural Victoria.
This included “being given unmentionable parts of a bull calf to eat from a branding fire in outback Queensland.”
Bearing a swag of new military honors bestowed over the weekend, Charles had earlier laid a wreath in the Hall of Memory at Australia’s imposing national war memorial.
Robert Fletcher and his suit-wearing alpaca “Hephner” were among the polite crowd of royal super fans and young families queuing outside to catch a glimpse.
“Hopefully we’ll get in today to see the king and queen. And hopefully a selfie or something,” Fletcher told AFP while holding his nine-year-old alpaca on a short leash.
Chloe Pailthorpe and her children traveled to Canberra from a small rural town nearby.
“I’ve been writing to the royals since I’ve been about 10,” she told AFP.
“My kids have been writing to the royals. We just love what the royals do.”
Many of Australia’s state premiers will miss a reception for the king hosted in the parliament’s “great hall.”
Tied up with overseas travel, elections, and other pressing government business — their absence suggests the throne does not have the pulling power it once did.
Australians, while marginally in favor of the monarchy, are far from the enthusiastic loyalists they once were.
Visiting British royals have typically carried out weeks-long visits to stoke support, parading through streets packed with thrilled, flag-waving subjects.
But the king’s fragile health this time around has seen much of the typical grandeur scaled back.
Aside from a community barbecue in Sydney and an event at the city’s famed opera house, there will be few mass public gatherings.
